Saturday, December 30
Gainesville, FL
4 PM
Florida Gators
vs
Vanderbilt
Florida coach Mike White is searching for answers for his team's offensive and defensive struggles, not to mention a first win in six tries over SEC rival Vanderbilt.
UF Looks to Hit Reset Button with start of SEC season
Saturday, December 30, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
Maybe the holiday break and league tipoff against Vanderbilt is what the Gators need.
At least, that's how the Florida Gators are looking at things.
"Everything that's happened up to now is done with. It's zero-zero," UF grad-transfer forward Egor Koulechov said Friday, on the eve of the opening to the Southeastern Conference schedule. "The wins, the losses, everything."
The good and the bad.
There was a nice helping of the former early in the season and entirely too much of the latter in Florida's most recent outings. Since starting the season with four straight wins, including a pulsating double-overtime victory over reigning NCAA runner-up Gonzaga, the Gators have split eight games, struggled to put the ball in the basket and been far too generous on defense. After getting away for a four-day break for the holidays, Florida (8-4) reported back for duty the day after Christmas and began pointing to this so-called fresh start, which commences with Saturday's 4 p.m. SEC lid-lifter against Vanderbilt (5-7) at Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center.
The opponent is an appropriate one, given the theme. If it truly is a new day for the Gators, maybe they'll be able to do something about the mastery the Commodores currently hold in the series. Vandy has won five straight over the last two seasons, including a three-game sweep last year when the two regular-season games were decided by two points, and their meeting in the SEC Tournament went to overtime. The Commodores made all the plays don't the stretch.
Just one big black and gold frustration, for the Gators.
"It was tough to not have a win against Vandy," junior shooting guard KeVaughn Allen said. "At the same time, you've just got to forget it, learn from those games and just keep going."
Sort of like the theme coming out of the non-conference season.
"They absolutely had our number [last year], I don't want to dodge that," Coach Mike White said. "Our guys understand that Vandy has gotten the better of us the last couple years, but if we're thinking about that then we're thinking about the wrong things."
Clean slate, remember?
[Read senior writer Chris Harry's 'Pregame Stuff' breakdown here]
The Gators would like to think the start of league play will be accompanied by a fresh, more confident look, the likes of which the team exuded back in November when, behind a ferocious offense, it climbed to the nation's No. 5 ranking before three straight losses (and four in five games) tossed them from the Top 25. UF went from averaging 99.5 points per game, shooting 49 percent from the floor and 47 from the 3-point line through the first six games to scoring only 67.8 points, making 38.8 percent overall and a woeful 28.6 from deep over the next six.
The Gators didn't just forget how to play. There are basketball reasons for the decreased numbers and they're rooted mostly in the way opponents have defended UF since its impressive run at the PK80 Invitational in Portland, Ore. Defenses are running shooters off the 3-point line, trying to deny open shots on the perimeter and challenging the Gators to do something they tend to shy away from: Drive the ball and try to force contact. Too often, Florida is taking what the defense gives instead of moving the ball and getting something it wants.
As far as the defensive issues, those have been around all season, with injuries in the front court impeding any progress. Fifth-year senior center John Egbunu and freshman forward Isaiah Stokes are on the tail end of reconstructive knee-injury rehab and have yet to play this season, while freshman forward Chase Johnson, used sparingly early, can't shake concussion protocol. UF's red-hot start shooting the ball early on masked its defensive deficiencies.
Finally, the Gators' four losses came to opponents — Duke, Florida State, Clemson, from the Atlantic Coast Conference, plus a gut-punch at home against Loyola Chicago — that entered the weekend with a combined record of 44-6.
"We did some good things and did some bad things," Allen said, pretty much summarizing the pre-league season. "We've just got to [correct] the mistakes that we made and learn from them and move forward."
Whether White and his staff were able to correct some of the overriding issues remains to be seen. The whole "fresh start" theme got off to something of an ominous beginning once the Gators got back from break. The team's leading scorer, swingman Jalen Hudson, was mostly sidelined for three days with a virus and sophomore backup center Gorjok Gak showed up with a swollen knee and was unable to practice at all.
So UF went to work with its eight available scholarship players, plus a couple managers who were elevated to walk-ons before the season.
"I haven't been a part of something like this. It's nuts, how many guys we've got banged up," White said. "I know [the injured players are] just as frustrated — and their teammates are. We'd like to get to full strength at some point."
It won't be for Vandy, which is unfortunate, given the recent history there. And then there's UF's even more recent history, as in the four losses this month.
Not that of it matters now (See "fresh start"), right?
"Adversity can kill teams or make them stronger, and not many teams have been through the ups and downs we went through — and it's only been 12 games," said Koulechov, who epitomizes those "ups and downs" having started the season at 56 percent from distance through four games, but falling to 19 percent in the eight since. "I think the break was good for us and came at a good time. We reset our minds and bodies. Hopefully, you're going to see the Gators everybody wants to see again."
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